A Researcher's Perspective on Current Events

August 2010

August 30, 2010

When I first read Adweek’s survey question: “Given a choice of the following, which one would you most want to be?”, with the given choices being richer, thinner, smarter or younger, I immediately thought: brilliant.

Immediately after that, I thought: is this a trick question?

I assumed, if you were smarter, maybe you could invent something, get a better job, or in some other way figure out how to become richer. If you were younger, maybe you could do the same – make different decisions earlier in life, go into a different field of work, etc, which could also result in making you richer. As a younger person, you could take school more seriously than you might have, which may not actually make you smarter, but it could certainly make you more well educated. In the same vein, if you were younger maybe you would also be thinner, before bad habits have fully taken hold. Or, if you were richer you could hire a personal trainer and a chef, which one would hope could make you thinner. As these rationales go on, the question becomes: does one answer trump the others?

Ultimately it’s a fun question to ponder and you could play it however you like. But, at the end of the day the one thing I decided that I most would want, is for “happier” to have been included in the options. As much as some people have financial stress that is burdensome, or are extremely dissatisfied with their weight or appearance, in my mind if you are happy—who cares? In the actual survey 43% of Americans, the largest percentage seen, said that they would choose to be richer. But, I wonder how the results would look if happier was also an option.

Does happiness trump all, or would people rationalize that money can buy that, too?

August 23, 2010

The Harris Poll's Alienation Index has stayed nearly the same (actually it’s gone down one point) from last year … meaning we, as Americans, essentially feel just as “disaffected,” “isolated,” and even “hostile”… according to my Microsoft Word thesaurus… as we did last year.

That’s the bad news.

Now, here’s the good news…We appear to feel significantly less alienated today than we have in the previous two decades, and we feel less alienated now under the tutelage of Barack Obama than under Clinton, Bush (the father), Reagan, Carter and Ford.

But hold up, before we start popping the champagne of peace, love and understanding, there’s also some confusing news…Our level of alienation is about the same today as it was under George W? And we feel less alienated now than when we did when the economy was booming? When we weren’t at war? When we all had jobs? So go figure…

When we parse apart the statements that make up the Index (separating those that are more political from those that are more social or economic in nature), we can provide a little more detail to the story.

In terms of agreement (which means higher alienation), Americans today are more likely to feel that:

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer = ↑ 2

You’re left out of things going on around you = ↑ 2

And less likely to feel that:

The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you = ↓ 3

What you think doesn’t count very much anymore = ↓ 4

Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself = ↓ 4

Maybe this Index is somewhat emotional and not altogether rational. But there is some evidence that Americans today are more likely to feel that their voice is being heard, even if the economy is tanking and their world is spinning…Score a small 1 for Barack Obama.

August 16, 2010

Turns out that being squeaky clean (at least as far as the public knows) now officially means NOTHING in the way of sports fanship. Last month, we released the Harris Poll’s list of favorite sports stars… and as far as I can tell, only 2 out of the top 8 have stayed out of the spotlight for off-the-court/field hijinx (is that what we are calling it that these days?). Our favorites list includes reality-show proportions of addiction, infidelity, gambling, and arrests, just to name a few of the exploits covered.

Sure, we don’t love our sports stars quite as much when they’ve been behaving badly…Like for example, Tiger Woods no longer has a lock on first place, he now has to share it with what-scandal?-I-have-my-fifth-ring Kobe Bryant…And yes it’s true that Lebron James fell 3 spots to #6 after he took us on a tour of his ego this summer.

But this list rings like a roll call of who’s most-wanted for indecent and egomaniacal behavior rather than (or as well as) a list of our most beloved sports icons. As a mom and a sports fan, my list would be SO different… but then of course, none of mine have ever won a ring. What’s the lesson here, kids?

P.S. Just to Lebron, only one athlete in the top 8 has never won a ring in his sport… I’ll let you do the math. So with all respect, maybe your move to Miami was necessary but I’m not sure how patiently we are going to hold onto your spot.